The Laziest Girl Alive Chapter 02

The Laziest Girl Alive Chapter 02

The show blew up.

Overnight, my brother and Chloe’s live-streamed reality series shot to number one on the trending tab.

Chloe’s popularity climbed right along with it.

She was smart and figured out pretty fast what really drove the views.

She started arranging flowers in the living room, swapped her light beach reads for thick academic hardcovers, and even began learning how to make complicated desserts from scratch.

Every time, she would casually show off the results in front of the camera.

Then she would look over at me curled up on the couch with this perfect mix of concern and helplessness in her eyes.

The viewers ate it up.

They praised her for being good at everything and trashed me as useless.

I didn’t care.

I just thought she was noisy.

That afternoon, for once, I wasn’t asleep.

I was sitting on the rug with a notebook spread across my legs and a handful of pages covered in dense scribbles scattered over the coffee table.

I was working through a problem and so deep in thought that I didn’t even notice when my brother sat down next to me.

“Drawing something?” Ethan asked.

I grunted in acknowledgment without looking up, my pen moving fast as I wrote out a long string of symbols no one else in the room could read.

Footsteps came closer.

It was Chloe.

She was carrying a glass of water, wearing her perfect smile as she floated over.

“Nora, are you busy?” she asked. “Have some water. You haven’t moved all afternoon.”

Her voice was so sweet it practically dripped honey.

I ignored her.

My train of thought had just reached the critical point.

Then the accident happened.

There was a sharp crack.

The glass hit the floor, and the water soaked straight through the pages I had spread out on the coffee table.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, Nora!”

Chloe dropped into a crouch right away, her voice trembling as her eyes went perfectly red.

“I… I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to bring you some water, and my foot slipped. It’s all my fault.”

She fumbled for napkins, hands shaking, as tears started spilling over on cue.

The camera zoomed in immediately, capturing every second of her delicate, tearful, guilt-ridden performance.

Her fans in the livestream were heartbroken for her.

[Don’t cry, Chloe. You didn’t do it on purpose.]

[This is all Nora’s fault.]

[Exactly. Look at her attitude. Chloe is crying her eyes out and she can’t even be bothered to move.]

They were right about one thing.

I didn’t move.

I just lowered my head and stared at the pages, now wrinkling and warping as the water soaked in.

Rage flared up in my mind, hot and fast.

But I forced it back down.

Getting mad wouldn’t solve anything.

And it was way too much effort.

I reached out and carefully picked up the soaked sheets one by one, moving so gently that you’d think I was afraid of tearing them.

Then I stood, stepped around Chloe, and walked to the window.

I laid each page flat on the sunniest stretch of the windowsill so they could dry on their own.

From beginning to end, I didn’t look at Chloe once or say a single word.

That just made her one-woman show feel painfully awkward.

Her sobs slowly died down.

With the streaks of half-dried tears on her face, she started to look a little ridiculous.

When my parents came downstairs, this was exactly what they walked in on.

My mom frowned, took Chloe by the arm, and helped her up, gently wiping her tears while scolding, “Why are you apologizing, sweetheart? It wasn’t your fault. Some people just weren’t raised right and never learned basic manners.”

My dad gave me a look filled with utter disappointment.

Only Ethan came over and helped me wipe up the water on the floor.

Then his gaze shifted to the damp pages drying on the windowsill.

He picked up one that wasn’t completely soaked through yet and stared at it for a long time.

After a while, he lifted his head and looked at me, his eyes full of questions.